In the age of high imperialism, thousands of species of plants and animals weretransferred between Australia, Asia, and Africa. Some of them were exchanged deliberatelyfor economic, scientific, or aesthetic reasons. European settlers, for example,transported cattle, horses, and sheep between South Africa, Asia, and Australia;camels were exported from Northern India to Australia; and exotic birdsfrom South Asia, such as, for example, the Myna bird, were taken to Australia andSouth Africa. Other species travelled between the continents accidentally, as stowaways.Whether intentional or not, these transfers changed ecologies and livelihoodson the three continents forever.

This workshop aims to uncover the exchanges that have modified African, Asianand Australian environments. Integrating both human and non-human agency inour understanding of ecological networks, we will ask in our workshop how differentparticipants in the transfers related to each other and how these relationshipschanged in the context of ecological transfers. In our workshop we will examine inparticular how Europeans built on non-European traditions of species transfer, andwe will investigate where colonial exchanges met with opposition. Moreover, wewill track the extent to which species transfers across the Indian Ocean led to agreater awareness of ecological imbalances, environmental destruction, and climatechange. We aim to reassess the significance of the networks and transfersacross the Indian Ocean in the broader context of imperial and global relations. Bythese means we hope to develop an agenda that integrates the transfer processesbetween the three continents into a transoceanic environmental history.

We invite proposals for papers that will shed new light on these questions. Particularlywelcome are proposals that explore innovative concepts and theories, includingapproaches that bring together natural sciences and humanities, animal studies,Actor-Network-Theory etc.

Proposals might address some of the following questions:· How and why did experts and travelers cross the Indian Ocean and how didthey establish networks of exchange and transfer?· How have hierarchies between different human and non-human participantsin the transfers shifted over time?· Which role did indigenous, local knowledge play in the transcontinentaltransfers?· To what extent were participants in different places aware of environmentalchange and destruction?· What are the links between the observation of ecological change and environmentalism?· What were the long-term effects of species transfer?

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words along with a short CV to<events@rcc.lmu.de>

The deadline for proposals is 28 February 2018.We will discuss precirculated papers at the workshop: final papers should besubmitted by 15 September 2018.